It does not talk about OpenSSH at all. To my understanding the SSH Tectia Client/Server solution has not been ment as a replacement for OpenSSH. It is completely different product with different configuration logic.

I see it rather odd that OpenSSH community didn't implement any compatibily options with Tectia products. Let me remind you the original SSH implementation comes from Tectia company (nowadays named again also SSH Communications Security corp.) and its current CEO. I talk only on my behalf here. Not representing the company.

However, this incompatibility is only on configuration level. The 2 (OpenSSH and Tectia SSH) should be completely interoperable on the wire.

Tectia clients 5.x and higher do not have the "-o" option to support OpenSSH options. It is to support some cases of migration from 4.x version of Tectia client to 5.x. It refers to "-o" options of 4.x version of Tectia client and not OpenSSH! In version 5.x the configuration logic has been changed completely.

For the options you reffer to there are alternatives in 5.x and newer Tectia clients:

For number of password prompts I found no alternative, but I don't see how that could be relevat to any scripts. Proper authentication of automated scripts should be done with certificates or at least public keys.

If you reffer to this pssh: http://www.theether.org/pssh/, then I have found this sentence there: "This package provides parallel versions of the openssh tools". Tectia clients are not OpenSSH tools!

The decision to change configuration logic completely has been done before I joined the company, so I cannot comment on that.